


blood stories

by foxlives



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:23:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxlives/pseuds/foxlives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Natasha go looking for the Winter Soldier. <i>There are four ways this could end.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	blood stories

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this last winter, and have been hauling it out every few months to fuck with it since. at some point, i've just gotta. stop.
> 
> playing fast and loose with various canons, as is necessary what with about sixteen different comics 'verses--plus movies!--to contend with.
> 
>  **warnings** for red room-style mindfuckery, and potential character death.

A nightmare:

She's dancing, dancing like she fights, and maybe that should've been her first clue. She's pretending to be dead, gauzy costumes, prop mausoleum. She can feel her feet bleeding, blood slick in between her toes. 

She does a pas de chat and doesn't wince. She's toward the front of the line because she’s so small, and the audience can see her face. She looks sad, she looks heartbroken. She's pretending to be dead and it's not all that hard: she's thought about it a lot. 

She's pretending to be dead but she's not, she's pretending to be dead but instead she's given this, a new life, a new past. This is a gift, she understands. This is a gift.

This is a dream, so she can feel the memories breaking down right there on stage, blood between her toes and memories running liquid and slick in her mind. This is—

*

Reality:

She wakes up with cold sweat itching at her skin, and lies in bed thinking things like _physiological reaction_ and waits for her heart to stop pounding. It doesn't happen like this much anymore. She sits up and looks down, watches Steve sleep with a stillness she recognizes, a soldier stillness. It's not what you think: the room they found on such short notice only had one bed. They picked Steve instead of Clint to join her on this mission because, they said, she'd be less likely to sleep with him.

That's what the faceless SHIELD agent told her, voice passive. It's not the real reason, of course, but she hasn't figured that out yet. Why Steve?

She likes him. Good instincts—she saw him pick up an AK-47 and hit a target dead center the first time he tried. She saw him strangle the guard outside the records building in Budapest when he thought she wasn't looking. Good instincts, and she respects that.

She slips out of the bed, toes curling on the icy floorboards. It's Prague, and it's not even a real hotel room. They've been zigzagging over Eastern Europe for two weeks now, collecting intel, figuring tactics, breaking necks.

She's kidding about that last.

Prague is lovely, from this angle. The sheets whisper behind her as Steve sits up, his eyes probably still closed. He waits until the very last moment to open them, hands feeling lightly over his surroundings until he knows where he is, has found what he needs. She doesn't find it endearing; she used to do the same thing, and has a scar arcing over her left thigh to prove it. She'll have to train him out of it, and soon.

She glances behind her: Steve has one palm pressed to his eye, the collar of his t-shirt sitting uneven on his neck and gouging down to show the sharp angle of his collarbone. She slept in her jeans, and the only thing they unpacked were the toothbrushes in the bathroom down the hall. Strangely civilized of them, but she thinks it comforts Steve. He doesn't know why he's on this mission any more than she does. He didn't know a thing about the Winter Soldier until he was briefed for this, never went through training with the Soldier as a ghost story and a holy grail and a real, awful threat. Not the way other SHIELD agents had. Maybe they wanted a fresh set of eyes.

"The train's in an hour," she tells him, resting back against the windowsill. She crosses her arms. "I'm ready whenever you are."

"Sure, right," Steve says, looking up at her. Smiling wanly. "Just—give me a second, I'll be ready."

She nods. She watches him push off the bed, and pretends to sort through the file as he gets dressed.

They pack the toothbrushes, their phones, the file, and they make it to the train station in twenty minutes. They're good at this. Natasha smiles grimly.

Steve looks at the train that's sitting heavy and sleek in the station; his fingers tighten. His knuckles are white against the strap of his bag, and she says, "Why don't we take a walk."

 

 

They're sitting side-by-side on the train to Yaroslavl, his arm against hers and his hands jittering against his leg. She pulls out the file, calmly, spreads it out over her lap. She can feel him watching over her shoulder. She says, voice low, "You got a copy of this?"

He nods.

"SHIELD doesn't know much," she says. "Some sightings, some myths."

"What you've told them."

She looks at him. "I haven't told them everything."

He looks back at her, maybe a little surprised. Not very surprised, all considered.

"And no picture," he says, still looking her in the eye, his mouth at a good angle.

"They thought my memory was better than a sketch artist," she says dryly. "There've never been photographs of anyone in the Red Room. No records."

Steve looks past her, out the window. It's still before dawn, and his face is reflected, edges smudged, in the glass. "Yeah," he says. She raises an eyebrow. His jaw is tight. She wonders what he wants to say.

She doesn't say anything, though, and neither does Steve. They ride the rest of the way to Yaroslavl quietly, Steve rubbing his thumb over the softened edge of James's file that's still laid open in her lap.

 

 

Their hotel is nice this time, upscale, a planned stop that SHIELD made sure to pay for. The carpet is thick, the wallpaper is creamy and shining. Steve hunches his shoulders up under his jacket, and it doesn't make him look any smaller.

Their room is glittering, the wallpaper striped gold and the lamps glinting dully in the light that's trickling in with them through the open door. She leaves Steve to turn on the light, setting her bag down on the chair.

They take out their toothbrushes, their phones. It's too late now to do anything useful, so they wait for the morning. Steve changes into sweatpants in the bathroom. Natasha checks her phone, her knives, the Smith & Wesson under Steve's pillow and the revolver under hers. Steve comes out of the bathroom, and Natasha watches him circle around the bed, sit down, in the gilt-edged mirror hung like a gash against the wallpaper.

They sit on the edges of their beds. Steve is combing a hand through his hair, setting the alarm on his phone. Natasha sets her elbows on her knees, laces her fingers together. Appear bigger than you are. 

 

 

"There's something you should know," Natasha says. She doesn't believe that knowledge is power.

Steve watches her face, but there's nothing there to see. A furrowed brow. An expression she used to practice in the mirror. She does believe that sometimes, sometimes, knowledge can keep you alive.

"The Winter Soldier, his name is James," she tells him. His eyes widen, just in the slightest. This is something he should know. "We used to work together, in the Red Rom." He nods. He's heard this already. "I ran away in the fifties, when we were on a mission in Luxembourg. Something triggered my memories under the shit they put in your head, the real memories. I ran. James got a few extra scars, finished the job. Went back to headquarters."

Steve nods. He thinks he understands. "I left him behind," Natasha says. "I got out because he didn't." She's trying to read Steve's expression. "I don't regret it. I don't regret anything. I'm telling you so you know, I'm telling you so that if I'm triggered in Moscow and I revert to the brainwashing, you need to leave me behind."

Natasha stares him down, waits for him to look up from the red-patterned carpeting. She believes in these exchanges, she believes in this. A tooth for a tooth. Steve looks up.

"Okay," he says.

 

 

They spend the day in Yaroslavl, the last place rumors of the Winter Soldier turned up. Five years ago, thirteen people go missing; ten bodies eventually turn up, but they'd never found the other three. Natasha would tell them to look in the sewers.

They pretend to be tourists, Natasha affecting a French accent to her Russian. "Anything interesting?" Steve asks her, once they're sitting alone at a coffeeshop table. He's smiling, an edited version of the smile he's been giving as she chatted away to the proprietress. A better version, if Natasha's honest.

She lifts an eyebrow. "Not a lot." She can feel her smile go devilish. "She thinks I'm from Alsace. You're my American boyfriend, who's filthy rich, and I think you're going to propose." Her smile widens, as Steve ducks his head and laughs. "Are you blushing?" she asks, kicking him lightly under the table.

"You're very forward, Ms. Romanov," he tells her, glancing up. The smile is still there, and he leans forward on the table, nudging his coffee cup aside with his forearm. "Did she know anything?"

Natasha nods, watching as Steve's smile stays in place, as his fingers tear apart a sugar packet with a neatness she recognizes. He's good, looking like any tourist might; hunching his shoulders enough to downplay his size, he could be nondescript, unthreatening. "She has some ties to the seedier side of the city," she tells him. "Warned me to stay away from here tonight, so I think there'll be something going on, a meeting."

"A meeting?"

"Bounty hunters," she explains. "He comes out every five years, almost like clockwork. He's been in Yaroslavl three or four times in the last few decades, so it's not unreasonable."

"Bounty hunters?" Steve asks. He looks mildly puzzled, and reaches for the hand she has wrapped around her coffee cup, rests his fingers over hers. It looks nice, sweet. She desperately wants to roll her eyes, and the corners of Steve's mouth are turned up just slightly.

"The Winter Soldier is a myth," she tells him. "A living legend."

Steve's head snaps up. His expression is dark. She doesn't give any sign of apology. "He killed thirteen people the last time he was out. He's been doing this for sixty-five years, you can do the math. People want his head."

"And we're gonna be the ones to get it?" Steve's mouth is set, an expression she likes on him.

"Hopefully attached to the rest of him, yeah," Natasha says, setting her mouth in a matching line. "SHIELD wants him for questioning, wants to shut the Red Room down for good."

Steve looks down at their hands, the tip of his finger tracing along her knuckles. He looks like he's considering something. She waits for— "Is that what they did to you?" Steve asks. He's still looking at their hands. "Question you?"

"I'm afraid that's classified, Captain," she says lightly. The corner of his mouth hitches up in something that's not really a smile.

"I deserved that, huh?" He doesn't wait for a reply, and that's smart of him. He traces the pad of his thumb through a spill of sugar on the table. "So what's the plan?"

It's a peace offering, giving her the control, and she wonders who he was, before he was a soldier. "This is the plan," she tells him, palming a tiny microphone from her pocket. She reaches across the table, tucks it into the breast pocket of his shirt. He looks down as her fingers brush the stiff-starched fabric, looks up as she leans back in her chair, letting her hand slip from under his. She smiles, and she thinks it's genuine.

"We're going to bug this place," he says.

"Yep." She drinks the last of her coffee. Steve's hand is still resting against the cup, and his fingers flutter as she picks it up. "Put it where it won't be noticed, but where it'll still pick up. The reception on these little ones is shit."

Steve smiles, ducks his head again and looks up at her. He touches the microphone in his pocket. "Is this a test?" he asks.

 

They set microphones along the front windows, where most of the tables are. One by the register, when Natasha goes up to ask for directions to a nearby hotel. The proprietress gives her a knowing look. She says they look lovely together. Natasha smiles, one of the fake ones. She wonders if she'll tell Steve about that.

Steve is waiting for her at the door, hands in his pockets. The sun is going down, and the harsh electric cafe light battles with the pinkish glow coming in the windows. Natasha says, "Ready?" and Steve says "Sure."

They walk back to the hotel, not the one the woman gave them directions to, but the one SHIELD booked them a room in. They walk back to the hotel, because Steve doesn't like trains, his shoulders tense and his neck gone stiff every time they've had to ride one this whole mission. Natasha knows, Natasha's read the file. Natasha knows everything about him that SHIELD knows, and SHIELD knows a fucking lot, at least after the age of twenty-three. 

So Natasha knows why Steve doesn't like trains. She wonders what Steve's read about her.

They walk back to the hotel, and Natasha asks him. "I thought you'd know everything that's out there about you," he says, after glancing at her, surprised.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Rogers," she tells him, smirking lightly. He's watching the horizon with a softer mirror of her smirk. "Of course I do," she goes on; "that doesn't mean I know what you've read."

"Wasn't flattery," is all he says, after a moment. She glances back at him, but he's still watching the sun go down, in an ever-fainter wash of red. The walk the rest of the way, silent.

It's well and truly dark when they get to the hotel building, and they take the stairs up to their fifth-floor room. Steve doesn't like trains; Natasha doesn't like elevators. She wonders what Steve's read about her.

 

She kisses him first. It's not like it's a surprise; it's not like she wasn't expecting this. They picked Steve instead of Clint to join her on this mission because, they said, she was less likely to sleep with him. She can picture the agent's face as he told her, and knows, always knew, that it was patently untrue. Her missions always go better when the mark is in love with her.

 

Is Steve the mark? He doesn't think so.

What story are we trying to tell?

 

But Steve isn't in love with her. Steve doesn't fall in love so easily, and Natasha doesn't fall in love at all. They'll most likely need each other at some point in the next week, someone to stand guard or an extra set of hands. This is what Natasha values over love: someone who works well with her, someone to stand guard as she breaks into an old prison. She doesn't know what Steve values like that.

She kisses him first, in the hallway. She kisses him first, up against the door of their room, and feels his mouth go slack under hers, feels the moment when he catches up and starts kissing her back. Feels how his hands stutter over his shoulders, slide up to tangle in her hair. He starts kissing her back, mouth hard and pressing, and she reaches under his elbow to let them in. Fits the card into the lock and pushes the handle, and Steve is staggering back as the door opens but he doesn't let go of her.

She kicks the door closed and pushes his jacket off his shoulders, fists his shirt in both hands. Gasping against her mouth, he slides a hand under her shirt, palm pressing over her spine, one hand still in her hair and wrapping it tight around his fingers. She bites his lip, to see how he'll react.

He scrapes his hand into a fist on her back, nails scratching blunt over her skin. She starts unbuttoning his shirt. He pulls back just enough to give her room, and something about the way he looks at her, something—

She pushes and he gets it, lays down on the bed and shrugs out of his shirt, peels down his pants. The bed is huge, ridiculous, and Natasha climbs on top of him, hands and knees sinking into the duvet. It's red, the burgundy of the curtains and the carpeting. She bites into Steve's mouth. She wonders if it's a sign.

Steve is hard, and she pushes a hand between them. She's quiet when she fucks, but if she were to say anything, she wonders what it would be. Maybe this is enough—the hair, the build. She's seen the picture in his billfold, worn and creased. She's read the file. It's not like she doesn't know, what she's doing for him. Not like he doesn't know what he's doing for her in return.

His back arches off the mattress as she begins to jerk him off, his eyes shut and his hands spread over her back. It's not like he doesn't know what he's doing for her, or maybe he doesn't. Same tight smile, same rhythm when they talk and the same way of joking, one corner of their mouth hooked up and their eyes shining. Maybe he doesn't. Natasha bites at the corner of his jaw.

His hands curl on her back, fingertips pressing like he's trying not to dig his nails in. She bites a little harder, scraping down his jaw with her teeth. He comes biting his lip, digging crescents into the skin of her back.

He kisses across her collarbone as he comes down, across her neck. He moves one hand lazily from her back, over her hip. To the inside of her thigh, where his thumb rubs slow circles over her skin. Just above the knife sheathed and holstered to her thigh, that she didn't take off with her jeans; he doesn't ask, works around it deftly. He presses his thumb over her clit, the angle strange but so good, so—she shifts, rolls onto her side, and then he starts to rub two fingers over her in tight circles, quick and good. Steve's eyes are open now, watching her closely. She pulls him closer, not really kissing but their mouths brushing sometimes, lightly as Steve starts pressing harder.

She comes with a breath, her hips jerking and her mouth open against Steve's. He keeps a hand on her stomach as her heart rate slows, fingers warm and wet, and she tells him to go clean up. He rubs his thumb over the bone of her hip, strangely gentle, and then does what she says.

She spreads her hand, pale on the red duvet.

Is this a sign?

*

Another nightmare:

She is in a room, her back against the wall. There is something rough, flaking against the nape of her neck. It's dark, the walls a sickening brownish color, and there are no windows. No doors. The ceiling is low.

She is in a room and she isn't alone. In the corner, a shock of blond hair falling over his forehead, an automatic rifle resting on his lap. He raises an eyebrow, a crooked expression that belongs on someone else's face. Just because they have the same tight smile, the same rhythm when they talk and the same nervous habits, doesn't mean, doesn't mean—

And she knows this, obviously, she knows this but her subconscious—oh yes, she's dreaming, she knows this already—doesn't, her subconscious is pretty fucked-up. But she knows that already.

Steve says something, his mouth moving but the walls in this room suck out all the sound. Venom from a wound, right. She wants to close her eyes, she wants to stop touching this wall. She wants to wake up.

*

Reality again:

She wakes up.

The sheets are close and sweaty, wrapped around and under her. She's scared, but she just woke up. It'll pass. She extricates herself from the knotted sheets, walks silently to the bathroom.

She drinks handfuls of water from the faucet, scrapes her hair back from her face and puts as much of it up as she can. The room is one that puts the coffeemaker on the bathroom counter, so she starts it, hoping the door will muffle the sound.

There's a knock at the door. She opens it and it's Steve, of course, hands shoved in the pockets of his sweats and he's looking cautious. He doesn't say anything for a long moment; then, "You need anything?"

She stares at him, sizes him up. "It was a dream, Steve," she says dryly, finally, turning back to the coffee.

"Yeah, well." He shrugs. "I was asleep for sixty-five years." The angle is mouth is at is twisted, strange. "I know something about dreams."

The angle has gone slightly sour, and Natasha tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, watching her perfectly impassive face in the mirror. She'd thought of it, of course, the thick metal-walled boxes the Red Room had begun to experiment with after they dug the Winter Soldier out, the way James would go still and tense in his sleep. The way your mind has ways of pushing things through, the way your memories can be the worst thing that ever happened to you.

She doesn't say that to Steve. His gaze is set and dark, reflected over her shoulder in the mirror. She hasn't seen him like this since his first day at SHIELD, since just before she left for Russia and he came in with four agents and an expression she hadn't seen since Moscow.

The coffeemaker gurgles out, and she pours two mugs, real china. She gives one to Steve, watches his hands wrap around it delicately. She watches him walk back into the shadowy room, trusting that she'll follow him.

She does, and stretches out on her bed while he sits crosslegged by her feet. She turns on the TV. The coffee keeps her awake, but the caffeine barely touches Steve's bloodstream and he falls asleep sitting up, fist pressed against his cheek.

 

He starts awake when it gets lighter, the thick curtains turning bright around the edges. She hasn't seen him sleep much, and she figures he doesn't. Sleep much. He runs a hand through his hair, and looks at her.

She smiles small, and doesn't say anything. He doesn't ask how she's doing. The TV's still on, just a mumble in the background. She shuts it off, sits up and tells him, "I'll go back to the café." Steve looks at her for a moment, nods. "Sure."

 

 

She comes back an hour later, with a handful of tiny microphones and more coffee in a paper cup. Steve looks up from the laptop and slides it over to her with a half smile. She thumbs the chips out of the microphones, hooks them into the computer and lets them connect. She turns on the volume.

There's static after a moment, and Natasha skips through until hours after they'd left, when deeper voices start to layer over each other, speaking in hushed Russian.

Natasha murmurs a rough translation of what is being said over the recording. She's not surprised, but Steve's eyes are wide. Someone heard something, a friend of a friend of a friend who works in Moscow and is mentioned only vaguely. This is how they get their information, but they are very rarely wrong, Natasha knows. She's come up against groups like theirs before.

The recording ends, the chips out of memory, and sputters out in a fuzz of static. It's enough, though, more than enough to go on. Steve watches an indistinct point by the window, and Natasha watches him.

"They—the Red Room—they're really are targeting Yaroslavl," he says. He's frowning. "Why? What's the point of—what's the point?"

She smiles, and it feels weak. "Russia's been infamously difficult to invade for hundreds of years," she says. "The soldiers can never last the winter. Napoleon's armies froze to death by the thousands." Steve looks at her. He knows what she's trying to say. "The only people who have even successfully invaded Russia are the Russians," she says.

Steve looks at her. Does he know what she's trying to say?

"Okay," he says. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. He looks up at her, his hair uncombed and falling across his forehead. For a minute—

She picks up the file, closes the laptop. "They seem to have a source," she says, "and it seems to be a decent one. If he's really going to be let loose in four days, it fits the pattern, it matches SHIELD's intel. It means he'll be woken up soon, if he hasn't been already. If Fury wants us to bring him back still frozen, we've got to move."

Steve nods. "What's the plan?"

"We go in," she tells him, already moving for the duffle bag sitting demurely by the window. "If he's still frozen, we pull out, call in a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane. If he's awake, we'll gauge his mobility and either try and tranq him, or still call in the plane. We don't want to fight, Fury wants him in one piece."

"You don't think you can keep him in one piece?" Steve says, maybe amused.

"It's the Red Room," Natasha tells him, pulling out a CZ75 she's kept with her for years. "No one expects to come out whole."

He doesn't look like he can answer that, doesn't look like he wants to. Instead he stands up, trails his fingers over the shield, but he takes the semi-automatic Natasha hands him and tucks it into his jacket. They take only what they need, leaving their bags and most of their things in the room. Natasha takes a few more knives, fits as much as she can onto her street clothes. "Ready?"

He nods. They let the door click shut behind them, and they take the stairs.

They buy their tickets at the station, Natasha paying while Steve hangs back and watches the crowds around them. He's not too obvious, and Natasha's glad of that. She presses the paper ticket into his palm. She says, "We need to run, if we're going to make this."

 

 

It's still early morning when they get in, bright. The station is in a good part of Moscow—the American part of Moscow—and it'll take them a while to get to where they need to be. Fifteen lanes of traffic are at a standstill, so they walk, down headstone-lined sidewalks and through walkways under the streets. Steve is trying not to stare, Natasha knows. He does a good job of it. He's trying not to ask any questions that aren't absolutely necessary. She touches his back, lightly, telling him to turn when he tries to go straight. He doesn't do it again, trained close to her every move, and this is how she wants him, how she needs him.

She gets them a room in a hotel, not too close but not too far, either. Back-up, she explains shortly to Steve. Just in case they need someplace close by, just in case-- 

They keep walking, closer now, and she can feel it in her bones. When they get to the street, she touches Steve's shoulder, lightly, telling him to stop. He looks at her, and then up, at the smokestacks pinnacling high in the hazy air. It is a wrecked factory on a street of factories, crumbling slowly into the street like an avalanche, like a plague. Natasha can feel something close and tight in her chest. She tells Steve, "Follow me."

He does, she knows. She doesn't look back, but she can hear his soft intake of breath, like he was going to ask something. "This is it?" he asks flatly, verifying.

"What did you expect?" she asks in a low voice. She pulls the corner of her mouth into a smirk.

"I don't know." He tilts his head back, squints against the sky. He looks up at the rough brick, and she wonders if he thinks it doesn't look threatening.

She pulls out a slick black pocketbook, credit card slots filled with carefully retrofitted Red Room IDs. She hasn't been here in years, but she keeps up.

Steve looks at the pocketbook. "Those are all--?"

"Call it a hobby," she says grimly. She go around to the back, away from the street. She swipes the first card, punches a series of numbers into the keypad. It lights up green.

They step into a corridor, white-walled and dusty. Steve takes out his Glock. Natasha tells him, low-voiced, "There are two more floors to the top, and the offices we want will be there. If we're lucky, we'll be able to get into the computers with the CCTV hooked up, and we'll be able to tell if he's awake from here."

Steve nods. "And if we don't?"

"We'll go down," Natasha says shortly. "Two levels below the basement. There'll be guards." We'll have to kill them, she doesn't say. But Steve knows it already.

They step silently down the linoleum-floored hallway, no windows, no light. She closes the door behind them, and touches Steve's shoulder to steer him right, into the cement stairwell telescoping downwards as far as they can see. As far as Steve can see. She doesn't look.

She's been up here only twice, but she knows where to go. The high-ceilinged offices, linked by a circuit of connecting doors. They don't have a secretary, and it's still too early for anyone to be inside. These aren't used much, anyway; light can be seen from the street, and it's mostly low-level security offices, no one important. Natasha breaks in sleekly, the _slick_ of the ID card, no fingerprints on the keypad. No sound, as she leads the two of them through the steel-reinforced door.

The room isn't nice, isn't fancy. White walls going grey, bars over the windows and solid furniture. The computer is industrial, built up from the gutted insides of four or five models. Natasha leans over the modem, plugs in a thumb drive from her jeans pocket and watches the black screen flood with numbers, waits as they spit out the letters she types into the pop-up window.

"Got it," she says quietly, and Steve leans over her shoulder, watches as she looks for the camera feeds, one in every room of the basement. She scans through, finds the one she needs.

She hears the hitch in Steve's breath as she zooms in. A wall of steel drawers, frost spidering over the metal. One is uncovered, glinting dully in the grainy black-and-white picture. Natasha minimizes the picture of the freezers, sorts quickly through the tiles of looped shots, switching from image to image in even five-second cycles. She finds the one she wants, the room still familiar, the figure moving—

She blows it up until it covers the monitor, and says evenly, "That's him."

He's facing away from the camera, far enough that his knees to his head are in shot. The steel of his arm glints even in the grainy picture. The room is a shooting range, and he's firing an AK-47 at a moving target with a stiffness to his elbows, his shoulders, but he still has good form. He's probably hitting the mark. There's a man in the very corner of the screen, taking notes on a clipboard.

Steve lets out a breath. The man in the corner seems to have said something; in the next shot he's standing, and the Soldier is setting down the rifle. He's turning toward the camera. He's walking to the door, which is out of shot but she knows exactly—

Steve draws in a breath, a gasp, and she whips her head toward him. Eyes wide, mouth half-open like he was about to say something. He makes a move toward the screen as the next frame replaces the last, and the mouse clatters over the edge of the desk.

"Steve," Natasha says, and she's not scared but she has never seen Steve like this, and they are in the Red Room. "Steve."

Steve is staring at James's face, now close, though at a strange angle as he stands near the camera drinking from a plastic bottle. She remembers what they used to do when one of them got back from a particularly bad day, trying to snap back into the real world. If they somehow— "Steve, if you can hear me—"

"I can hear you," Steve says, scarily quiet, eyes still on the screen.

She glances to it, James now walking back to the man with the clipboard. "Can you remember everything that happened in the last fifteen minutes?" she asks him, keeping her voice steady. "Do you have any blank patches, anything you can't remember?"

Steve's shaking his head, he's not looking away from the screen. She has never seen Steve like this. They are in the—

 

 

She gets them to the hotel, Steve following her as long as she keeps a grip on his arm. She takes the stairs, she gets them into their room and presses Steve down onto a chair.

"Steve," she says, "look at me, okay? We're out of there, but you have to tell me if you're forgetting anything, if there's a part of your mind that feels blurry or uncertain. Okay, Steve, tell me—"

"What's the Winter Soldier's name?" Steve asks. He's looking at her, at least, his eyes less glassy.

"James," she says, reluctantly, but she wants to keep him talking. "They said they got it from his dogtags when they dug him out. I was never told a real last name."

"Where did they find him, exactly?" Steve's eyes are focusing, but the twisted feeling in her gut is worse.

"Germany," she tells him. "In the mountains."

Steve's knuckles are white on the arms of the chair. He looks around the room, avoiding her eye again, and he looks—

"James Buchanan Barnes," he says, quiet. "That's his real name." He's looking at her again, and for a wild moment, she wishes he wouldn't. He looks—

"Bucky," he goes on. "I grew up with him, in Brooklyn. He must've—they must've—"

She hasn't moved. He tells her, "Look it up." The lines of his face have gone hard, drawn. He looks tired.

She does, looks up army records she shouldn't have access to and sees James's face, staring arrogantly at the camera with his chin jutted out. She says, "It's him."

Steve nods, looking at his hands. "I thought he—" He glances up, looks back to his hands. "I, uh, I didn't think. I thought I was the only one, with the serum and everything."

She doesn't know what he's trying not to say, so she plays along. "Infinity solution," she says. Steve looks at her. "It's the same idea, something the Red Room developed in the forties, right around the time Erskine was finishing his version." She stops, wondering how much he knows, how much she should tell. "He had it, and if he'd gotten it somehow before he was frozen, that could've worked."

Steve lets out a breath, shaky and worrying. He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth. "Yeah. When I got him out—when he'd been taken, with his division—"

"I know the story," Natasha says.

Does she?

Steve's hands are shaking. James's file is still open on the laptop.

How much does Natasha Romanov know?

 

Steve's hands are shaking and Natasha lets him go, out to the balcony. There's a curtain over the sliding glass doors, and she keeps it closed. He's just found out his best friend's alive. He's not going to jump.

She gives him an hour and a half and then she goes out, glass door whispering quiet behind her. He doesn't look at her, his forearms on the metal rail of the balcony and a cigarette gone out between his fingers.

"It's, uh," he says, "supposed to calm you down. It doesn't affect me, I guess." The city looks good from this angle, twisting and glowing from the afternoon sun. "Guess I should've expected that."

"What do you want to know?" Natasha asks him. He looks at her for that, surprised. She stands next to him, elbows on the railing. His mouth pulls into a skeptical line.

"He was different," he tells her instead of asking anything, "after he came back. I thought it was just the war, you know, and some of it probably was, but—I took him off the table and he was." He swallows. He's looking back at the city. "Just the way he looked at people, the way his hands—he was different." What is he trying to tell her? "I'd seen him ruthless, I'd seen him angry and desperate and I'd never seen him like that."

"It's quieter," she says, and he startles.

"Yeah."

"You're not always like that," she tells him evenly. "The way you saw him on the security feed. It fades in and out, depending on how much you need it. When you're in a normal situation, you're as much of yourself as you ever were."

Steve smiles wryly, and it's not a good expression on him. She thinks of him with a rifle across his lap, with an expression that's not his but she knows now where he could've gotten it. "He didn't remember anything," she goes on. "They lock things away in your mind, create new memories for you to work from. He didn't remember anything about you."

There's a long pause. "Was that supposed to be comforting?"

She looks at him evenly, one eyebrow up. "Was it?"

His mouth turns up at the corners, but he doesn't say anything. Until; "SHIELD knew this, right? That's why they assigned me."

"Probably," she says.

He nods. "They couldn't have just told me?" It's maybe supposed to be funny.

It's maybe a little bit funny. She shrugs.

They stay like that, until the sun starts bleeding over West Moscow and Steve says, "What's the plan?" His hands are still shaking.

"Go back in." She takes the dead cigarette from his fingers, crushes it pointlessly under her heel. "He's obviously awake, so we’ll schedule a time to go back in, call in SHIELD air support, tranq him and get him out."

"Will we?" Steve asks. "Get out?"

She rests a hand on his shoulder, light and quick.

*

The nightmare:

Bleeding toes, an uneven stage. A chorus of girls all playing dead in gauze dresses. She tilts her head. Look sad, their instructor had told them.

Something precarious is in the air, the pit of her stomach. The burning lights, so hot one of the girls' dresses had caught fire last week. The audience is faceless, but getting closer. How can they be getting closer?

An uneven stage. Floorboards worn smooth, raked down toward the seats. Sometimes when you leap downstage it feels like—

Step, step, arabesque. Look up at the prop mausoleum. Look down.

What does it feel like, Natasha Romanov?

*

Reality:

She opens her eyes to a blue glow on the shadowed ceiling, slivers of city light slipping out from the edges of the heavy curtains. She cranes her neck just enough to see Steve, sitting at the table with the laptop open. His face is set, and every few minutes—two and forty-eight seconds, she counts it off—he'll click something, go back to watching the screen. She lies still until she's sure she can talk, until her heartbeat slows down and her throat is less dry.

"Steve?" she says evenly.

He looks up, eyes wide and startled. He looks down at her hand, back to her face. He looks guilty.

"Morning," he says, hitting something on the keyboard—pause—and evening out his voice. "Wanna put down the knife?"

She hadn't realized it was in her hand, but she doesn't think that explains his expression. She lays it carefully on the nightstand, making sure he can see. She swings her feet off the mattress. He goes to close the laptop, but it's not that far from the bed and she grabs the edge of the screen. Smiles at him in a way that makes him lean back in his chair, makes him let her swing the computer around to face her.

The paused frame is of the Winter Soldier, facing away from the camera. The muscles in his shoulders, his torso, are apparent, as is the steel arm glinting in the fluorescent training room light.

"I shouldn't have copied this," she says without inflection.

Steve looks down at his hands. Are they still shaking? It's hard to tell, in the uneven glow of light from the screen. "I couldn't sleep."

She watches him from the corner of her eye, for long slow seconds. "What are you looking for?" she asks him.

He glances up, slowly. Surprised. Then he says, "Well, the arm's new."

"Advanced Red Room tech," she tells him, sitting down and curling her feet up under her. "Stark's going to have a field day when we bring him in."

Steve's mouth curls into something like a smile. "What happened—?" He looks away. "What happened?"

She shrugs. "They dug him up like that. He took some work to put back together, but they were happy to find him." Her mouth pulls tight. "They did some experiments on him, some new things. I heard things, and they were—unhappy, when he disappeared."

Steve is still looking at the wall, mildewed paper, the corners peeling. "Put back together?" he asks.

She considers how much to tell. "A fall from that height, there's bound to be damage. You were a special situation. The Red Room employed the best scientists they could get, though, and that was pretty much the best scientists there were." She'd heard the screams through the cinderblock walls, corridors away. A week later, they'd given her a man with more metal in him than bones, bruises over his chest and the skin of his shoulder still red where it was connected to a shining metal arm. They'd told her to teach him her best. He was special, an experiment. Trained right, he could be more useful than ten Black Widows.

She hadn't taken it personally. He couldn't even use the arm, for the first few weeks.

Steve's watching her, eyes sharp. "How much aren't you telling me?"

She smiles, small and tight.

"Right," he says. Cranes his neck around, to look towards the window. The fluorescent city light is melting into dawn, and Natasha says, "Today. Same time. I'll call SHIELD, I know they have people in the area."

Steve nods, still looking toward the window. "We're taking him alive, right? That’s what SHIELD wants?"

"Yeah," she says, standing up. "If they didn't, they would've just sent me."

He looks at her. Is she joking?

 

Through the back door, down the corridor. Steve follows her, quiet and nimble, the gun tucked in his waistband and a set expression on his face. She wonders what he was like, before. Thinks of the Bucky Steve mentions to her sometimes, thinks of the James she knew. Wonders how different he used to be.

This time they take the stairwell, down and down to the ground floor. She eases her shoulder against the door, looks out. There's a woman behind a desk and she sees them, large shadowed eyes and dark hair plaited down to the middle of her back. She's dressed in a nice skirt and a blouse, but her fingernails are short and her hands are calloused and Natasha grabs her just as she's reaching for the gun stashed in the top desk drawer, breaks her wrist with a sharp crack.

Steve doesn't blink, and the woman doesn't scream. Trained, then. Steve takes her gun and tucks it into his jacket.

Natasha doesn't have to threaten; the woman crawls under the desk, barely wincing, and closes her eyes. A specific kind of training, then. Natasha walks purposefully away, and Steve is at her shoulder in a moment.

"We going to knock on the door?" Steve asks, as they strides up to the sliding metal panels.

"Knock _down_ the door, Cap," she says, glancing at him as she takes out the case. "Who do you think we are?"

He smiles a little. She smiles back, cool and even, and swipes a different card, punches in more numbers. She rolls the door back. They're in.

They're in a hallway, still on the ground floor. She goes to the elevator, swipes the card again and waits as the light turns green. There are four buttons, each labeled with a number, and she hits the last.

"There's a camera on us, but not a microphone," she says in a low voice, watching the numbers roll down. "There's not much happening right now, so they won't notice we're here for another minute or two. After that, we'll have five, maybe ten, but they'll be watching us. See what we want. They'll have the whole thing on lockdown, we'll have to fight our way out."

Steve knows all this. Does he? His jaw is set.

How much did SHIELD tell him about this mission?

The elevator stops, doesn't make a sound. The doors slide open. There aren't any stairs here, the elevators the only way to move between floors. Three basement levels, and the walls down here are damp. The air is heavy as they step off the elevator, but clinical-smelling. The linoleum on the floors is cracked, squares missing and you can see the cement underneath. It hurts, to fall on these floors. Steve closes his eyes for a moment, looks like he's trying not to shudder. He follows her out into the corridor.

Room numbers stenciled in red paint on the steel doors: 407, 409, 411. There are microphones here, so she takes his wrist, presses four fingers against his pulse, then three, then one. He nods infinitesimally. She lets go, brushing her hand over his lower back, where he has his Glock tucked into his waistband. He nods again, but doesn't pull it out yet. Good instincts, and she respects that.

421, 423. She's only glancing at the numbers on her right, knowing where they'll lead her. She walks past what she knows in a training room, an examination room, another corridor leading to a set of dormitories. The layout is still in her mind, escape routes laid over the clinical squares and rectangles she makes herself remember it as. She hopes they still work. She hopes they get that far.

431\. She slips another one of the cards through the keypad, smiles when the light glows green. Puts a hand on the door's handle and slivers it open, inches of steel still between her and—

A smile, the barrel of a rifle. Across the room, but his hand won't waver. She's seen him shoot people dead from four times this distance. "James," she says.

"Nice of you to drop in," he says. They're in a bunker, a single bed and toilet in the corner. The kind of room you get only when you're good, valuable. The kind of room you get when you're too dangerous to house with the others. Natasha spent years in this kind of room. "And you brought a friend. Sorry, is that—Captain America, really? I'm surprised. Pretty ostentatious, even without the uniform." An ugly grin is spreading like acid over his face. "I mean, even I know who he is, and I don't get out much."

Is that funny? Natasha smiles.

He raises an eyebrow and she grabs the barrel of the rifle, uses it as leverage to push him back against the wall. Pins him there. "Cute," she says dryly. Leans forward. She says something in his ear, voice soft but the word—

The grin goes fixed, and he's looking at her close. "First time we met," he breathes.

"You watched me strangle a trainee who'd tried to escape," she says. It's a check, something they used to do every time they saw each other, every time they woke up next to each other. A different question every time. A different answer. The right answer, though, or they wouldn't be standing here.

He looks past her shoulder. He recognizes Captain America. Does he recognize Steve?

That's not really a question; the trigger didn't reach that deep. He hasn't recognized Steve in sixty, seventy years. Depending on how you count it.

He looks past her shoulder to Steve, standing behind her. James says, "So you're still legit, huh? Running around with Captain America?" He looks at her, his eyes a little wider. "How do I know that?" He says, quieter. He looks genuine. "How do I know who he is?"

She tries not to laugh. "It's complicated," she says. An ugly laugh, tearing at her throat. She swallows it down. "They probably told you about him in a briefing, he'd be someone they'd want to keep an eye on."

"Yeah," he says. He's still looking at Steve. Natasha is watching him, to keep him from getting away, to keep from looking at Steve. They're speaking in Russian. How much does he understand?

"Natasha," Steve says. She doesn't look at him, even then. "How long do we have?"

Does the Winter Soldier understand English? How much of Bucky Barnes is left in him?

It's been eight minutes. "Not long enough," she tells him. Both of them. Does Bucky Barnes understand? "We should probably—"

There aren't any alarms. There's sudden darkness, as the lights shut down. There's a soft grunt, as the door starts to close on Steve; he keeps it opened with his back braced on the jamb.

"Run," she tells them. Steve understands. She keeps her hold on the Winter Soldier's rifle, keeps it against his chest, and looks back at him. Glassy eyes, the switch flipped again. The shutdown, of course. Was Natasha expecting this?

Steve is breathing harshly in the doorway, keeping the steel door from sliding closed on him. The Winter Soldier has her on her back in seconds, the cement bruising against her shoulderblades, her spine. It takes her half that time to flip them around, get her knees bracketed over his hips, and to tell him, "Try and catch us." It's a challenge. It's a bet.

How much is your life worth to you, Natasha Romanov?

*

A nightmare:

Silence. She can't see even inches in front of her face. Last she checked, Steve was beside her, six inches to the right. They are running.

Not quite silence. She can hear her feet, almost soundless on linoleum, and Steve's breathing, more even than it had been. He had let the door close, but only when they were on the right side.

The Winter Soldier knows the override protocols. The door only gave them a five, maybe seven-second head start. The walls start caving in halfway to the end of the corridor, and it's not silent any more. Blasts go off ahead of them. The Red Room is going to trap them, rubble piled high in their path.

A blast goes off above their heads, and she can hear the Winter Soldier's footsteps, running closer—closer—close—

 

 

 

There are four ways this could end.

 

 

 

Natasha keeps running. Steve keeps running. They make it to the end of the corridor, and Steve wrenches open the solid steel elevator doors. They climb up the shaft.

The Winter Soldier knows all the escape routes; he knows all the tricks. He climbs up after them, and Natasha's breath starts coming faster. The steel struts are cold, cutting into her palms, pushing solid against the arch of her boots. Steve is next to her, matching her speed.

She feels fingers on the heel of her boot. She kicks out, he lets go. She keeps climbing. He keeps climbing. Next to her, Steve keeps climbing. She breathes through her mouth, careful and measured.

But the Winter Soldier has practiced climbing these elevator shafts more than she has, more recently than she has, and he's gaining on them. Does she know this? She knows this. What does she do?

Option A. She waits until the Winter Soldier has his hand around the strut she's about to step on. She digs her boot in to his solid, sturdy hand; she feels his bones break under the tread. She kicks back, hard enough to loosen some teeth, hard enough to overbalance him. He lets go, and for the second time in his life, Steve Rodgers watches his best friend fall to his death. 

Bucky Barnes survived a fall to the valleys of the Swiss Alps. Can the Winter Soldier survive a five-story drop to the bottom of an elevator shaft?

Natasha says, "Keep moving." Steve follows her out of the shaft, and doesn't ask questions. Steve follows her into the SHIELD helicopter, and Steve follows her back to New York. Steve doesn't say a word.

Steve doesn't ask if that was really necessary; Steve doesn't ask if they could've done it any other way. He doesn't ask about how easily she broke every bone in Bucky Barnes's hand and how easy it was for her to give him the square, hard kick that would get him just off-balance enough to let go. Steve doesn't ask about any of it.

They go back to New York. She trains; Steve trains. Steve joins her in taking the stairs, to avoid even the bright, chrome, well-maintained elevators of SHIELD headquarters. They write up the mission report to give to Fury. They don't ask questions.

They go back to New York and they don't ask questions. They go back back to New York and Steve sits next to her while she explains, it was imperative. It was survival, him or us. Steve looks at his knees.

Fury nods. "I made a judgement call," Natasha says. Steve nods.

They go back to New York.

 

Option B.

The Winter Soldier knows all the escape routes; he knows all the tricks. Natasha keeps running, Steve keeps running, and two out of the three of them practically grew up here. Bucky Barnes doesn't remember Brooklyn, not right now. He doesn't remember Steve. He barely remembers Natasha. 

He chases them down the linoleum-floored corridor, hard cement underneath. The walls are caving in around them, great chunks of cement and drywall falling in their path. Dust and powder cloud in the air. Falling cement grazes Steve's arm, a swipe of red over his bicep. Falling cement build up in front of them, until even Natasha can't fit through.

The walls have fallen in around them. There's nothing they can do.

"Steve?" Natasha asks. They're trapped in separate pockets of debris, separate from the Winter Soldier. "James?"

"Yeah," Steve gasps. James doesn't say a word. He's probably already--

How long does it take for the rest of the ceiling to fall in? How long are they stuck there? You can survive three days without water. How long does it take for them to run out of air?

That's Option B.

 

No one gets out of the Red Room in one piece. No one gets out of the Red Room whole.

No one gets out of the Red Room in one piece, not even Steve Rodgers, who walked out of a lab in Brooklyn whole and alive. Maybe better than before, depending on who you ask. Steve Rodgers walked out of a lab in Brooklyn whole and alive, but even Steve Rodgers can't leave the Red Room without some damage done.

This time, it's not PTSD back in New York, it's not nightmares or training harder or a brand-new fear of elevators. That was Option A. This time it's something gone wrong in Steve's head, just a little, just enough. This time, it's walking out of the Red Room with something changed.

He walks out of the Red Room, and Natasha watches him and she watches James watching him. She knows something's gone wrong, but she feels removed. She knows something's gone wrong, but she feels pleased, happy even. She's feels like she's won.

The lockdown turned James Barnes back into the Winter Soldier--what else could it do? Natasha still has the switch in her brain. What would it take to flip it?

It's a riddle, it's a stupid joke: you can leave the Red Room, but the Red Room won't leave you. You go in and you come out but you come out different. You carry a room, a building, a linoleum corridor inside your head for the rest of your life. You don't care. You like it.

They walk out of the Red Room, but no one gets out of the Red Room in one piece.

 

Then there's the movie ending. This is the one where they all get out whole.

This is the one where they get to the SHIELD helicopter, Steve carrying the Winter Soldier, blushing bride-style, the metal arm hanging dead and cold. There's a bruise over his cheekbone, tiny cuts where the metal fist had collided. Natasha thinks about how long it's going to take to convince Steve that it wasn't his best friend who did that, not really. Natasha thinks about lying.

They go to Prague and they switch to a plane, the 2014 version of the one Howard Stark used to fly Steve over enemy lines seventy years before. They fly to New York. They lay Bucky out in the back of the plane, they lay James out in the back of the plane. They sit on narrow benches on either side of him. They don't talk to the SHIELD pilot, they don't talk much to each other. They fly to New York.

James goes to the infirmary, and they go to Fury. Steve is impatient, fiddling with the torn hem of his jacket. He looks over his shoulder a lot. No one leaves the Red Room in one piece. He watches them take James away, and he looks desperate.

"He'll be there for a while," Natasha tells him. Steve looks at her. She cocks her head; obviously she noticed.

"Sure," he says, "right. We should probably--" and he nods towards Fury's office.

She nods simply, and they go to explain, everything worked the way it was supposed to. They have the Winter Soldier, they both came back in one piece. Steve did what he was supposed to. Steve found out his best friend was alive, and Steve got him back. Everything worked just the way it was supposed to.

This is the movie ending; still, James doesn't wake up for two weeks, and doesn't say anything for five more. Steve and Natasha train together. They don't talk about the James she remembers, the Bucky he remembers, until they know which one they're going to get. This is the movie ending but it's not nice, it's not pretty to watch. Your best friend is lying in a hospital bed with thick black straps around his ankles and wrists. One of your best friend's wrists is glinting steel, smooth and hinged. Natasha can imagine.

Everything turns out okay, but this is a relative thing. James wakes up as James, not Bucky. Steve only gets pieces of his best friend back; Natasha only gets pieces of James. Bucky Barnes never wanted to belong to anyone, but he's not really Bucky Barnes anymore, is he? No one really gets what they want.

This is the Red Room, this is a hotel room in Prague, this is SHIELD headquarters. No one really gets what they want.

**Author's Note:**

> the ballet reoccurring in natasha's dream is _giselle_.
> 
> for visuals of what my red room looks like/general red room feelings, [see here](http://foxlives.tumblr.com/tagged/red-room-feelings).


End file.
